Title: Beautiful Creatures
Author(s): Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Genre: Paranormal
Page Count: 563
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Cover Rating: 3.5 out of 5. Not bad . . . just a little too dark. I love the font (who wouldn't?) and I like the trees, but the background is black. I don't tend to like solid black backgrounds, and it's actually sort of plain.
Inside flap:
There were no surprises
in Gatlin County.
At least, that's what I thought.
Turns out, I couldn't have been more wrong.
There was a curse.
There was a girl.
And in the end,
there was a grave.
Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small town Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she's struggling to conceal her power and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps, and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.
Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town's oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.
In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.
My expectations: I read somewhere that this book was like Twilight. I hate Twilight. But I'd also heard some things that were contradictory to that opinion, so I was mixed-close-to-pessimistic.
It was better than I had anticipated.
It was better than I had anticipated.
About the book: It isn't really like Twilight. Sure, there are similarities, but not really significant ones. It was a bit slow for me, and I found there was a lack of description that made everything feel a little truncated despite the length.
Another thing I found was that when Lena told Ethan she was basically a witch, (literally) I ran into the same problem that a lot of books have--Ethan's reaction felt fake and he accepted Lena's statements too easily. If someone told me they had powers that were out-of-this-world, I'd stare at them, nod calmly, steer them toward the door and politely smile and say it was nice to talk to them, then hope they say "Gotcha!" the next day, or call the mental health specialists. I mean, it's like everyone's having a gullibility crisis these days. They're don't seem to have a really strong connection with . . . reality. I know, I'm probably sounding weird talking about reality when this is paranormal, but really--would someone who was actually confronted with these things act like that?
Another thing I found was that when Lena told Ethan she was basically a witch, (literally) I ran into the same problem that a lot of books have--Ethan's reaction felt fake and he accepted Lena's statements too easily. If someone told me they had powers that were out-of-this-world, I'd stare at them, nod calmly, steer them toward the door and politely smile and say it was nice to talk to them, then hope they say "Gotcha!" the next day, or call the mental health specialists. I mean, it's like everyone's having a gullibility crisis these days. They're don't seem to have a really strong connection with . . . reality. I know, I'm probably sounding weird talking about reality when this is paranormal, but really--would someone who was actually confronted with these things act like that?
- Plot:
I expected it to turn out differently than it did. I found it slow, as I said before, but it wasn't terrible. I found the flashbacks to the Civil War times interesting, and some of the twists were a surprise.
- Characters:
Ethan is not a bad protagonist. He reads, he plays basketball, he wants to get out of the small-town life and strike it somewhere else. Living in a (fairly) small town myself at the moment, I empathized with needing to get away from the gossip-channel-no-one-conceals-anything hype.
Lena I didn't get attracted to at all. It's like "Doom and gloom and I'm going to just DIE!" throughout the whole darn book. I was like, "C'mon, girl! Get a SPINE!" while I read more of her tirades on how things were just horrible. *sighs* Not every MC can be perfect, I know, but she just seemed like such a whiner and somewhat weak.
Macon Ravenwood was intriguing. He wasn't what I expected, I later found out, but he was more 3-dimensional than a lot of them--go, Macon!
- Setting/Elements:
I enjoyed the references to To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, although if you haven't read the book or know the basics, you'll probably get confused during parts. There are a lot of names, comments, and other sorts of back-and-forth between the characters that have to do with To Kill A Mockingbird.
I also found the small-Southern-town attitude a plus. I'm not saying I agree with the Daughters of the Revolution, the NRA, or sympathize with the Confederacy, but I found the added aspect to the environment something you don't see much in YA Fiction, which is always good in my book.
Other: Language: b- possible s- (don't remember everything) words every once in a while, kissing, and I hope you know what an incubus is.
Took me a while to figure out what they meant by the title--there are no werewolves, vampires, or other paranormal creatures. Just (human) witches. I think they could have titled this something else just as easily, but I suppose it fits well enough.
Took me a while to figure out what they meant by the title--there are no werewolves, vampires, or other paranormal creatures. Just (human) witches. I think they could have titled this something else just as easily, but I suppose it fits well enough.
Do I recommend this book? This is probably getting a lot of a attention because of the recent release of Beautiful Darkness, so if you want to know what it's all about, then go ahead and read it. But it also depends on what you like. I say, read if it's available at the library and/or you think it's something that will appeal to your tastes. :)
-----The Golden Eagle
